Noroi no Video
by vikung-fu
Summary: Back in Camden town, Ace finds herself in possession of a singularly destructive videotape. Ring crossover book continuity.


**NOROI NO VIDEO**

It had started off as a joke, that's what she would have told anyone that had asked. After all, who was going to believe some dumb story about a videotape; that kind of stuff was for kids - _babies_. They'd arrived back in London a few hours ago, almost a year and a half after the event. At first she had been suspicious, why London, why so soon but he had just tapped the side of his nose and dropped the familiar cloth pouch of erratic coins in her hands and strolled off amongst the litter-strewn streets, waving his umbrella in an arc just precise enough to prevent people from walking too close.

She had shrugged and dropped the pouch into the deep pockets of her bomber jacket, following leads almost cold in the momentary absence between 1989 and the warming summer of 1991. The curse that had brought them back to London last week - or a year and a half ago, depending on how you looked at it - was dead, the Cheetah People no longer casting their shadow or shedding fur over London and Middlesex. The world had quietly changed and no one had bothered to think of dropping her a line about it.

After an hour or two of kicking cans down quiet cul-de-sacs and running her hands through the racks of tatty, fake fur coats in Camden she had found a way to pass the time amongst the idiots with their pierced eyebrows and scuffed boots, laughing at their inane comments as they trawled through video shops and shooting off remarks about places and people they'd never have the chance to even begin understanding. The professor had often extolled the virtue of not giving any one culture information about the fragile thread of its own destiny for fear of disrupting the delicate balance of time but she couldn't see the harm in making a few jokes here and there, the kind of comments that would remain as footnotes to the conversation to all but the most judicious of listeners.

As the hours had drawn on and the conversation had become increasingly heavier, talk had turned, somewhat naturally with the decline of the sun in the sky, to the kind of stories older kids had whispered in the corridors of her schools, the kind of stories people invented to scare themselves because they'd never done anything really worthwhile in their lives. She listened without really paying attention, having seen far too much of the universe to be really frightened by anything as flimsy as ghostly afterimages captured on film and faces distorted in the eye of Polaroid cameras pre-empting the deaths of all those frozen on the quick drying paper.

One of the loudest of the group, a lanky kid with ginger hair, long at the back and short at the front, had embarked on a long and contrite story at some point during the conversation, one that involved the mysterious death of several of the upper sixth formers at their school. Sitting on the top of the industrial green Biffa bins filled with black plastic bags of everyday rubbish, the lanky kid had talked about how there had been five kids in total, three boys and two girls. For a moment she idly wondered what they had been doing that would involve a ratio of three boys and two girls and felt momentarily sorry for the one boy that would have been left with his back to the rest of them on look out duty before allowing her attention to once more become swept up in the lanky kid's narrative.

The sixth form kids had apparently got together one lunch time at school, heading back to one of the boy's homes where they had watched a videotape together. A week later each of the five kids had been found dead, their faces warped in unimaginable expressions. The lanky kid paused; looking around the group of mostly captivated faces and whispered that each of the kids had died at the same time - one whole week since they had first watched the videotape.

She had smirked at that and commented that she could imagine a lot about the kind of expressions three boys and two girls might make when getting together without supervision. The group had burst into laughter at that and the atmosphere had dissolved until finally the lanky kid, forced to shout over the laughter of his friends, asserted the fact that he had a copy of the videotape in question.

The laughter had died as he had offered to show them the tape if they didn't believe him. At that point she had jumped down from the bin, pushing her hands deep in her pockets and jutting out her chin in a confrontational manner.

"Go on then." She had told him. "Let's see your bloody videotape."

Regret curdled in her stomach as she remembered the event. The lanky kid had smiled deviously and looked around at the rest of the group. None of them made eye contact with him, each of them exploring the year or so worth of scars on their shoes. He had dug deep in his denim jacket and produced a videotape without a single label on it.

"I thought you might say that," He smirked. "So I made a copy."

He threw it through the air and she caught it effortlessly. "You don't even know my name yet." She had smirked back at him.

He shrugged and turned away.

"Doesn't matter. In a week you'll be dead anyway."

After that the group had dispersed, each of them making their excuses before disappearing off into the night, slouching back home no doubt.

She hadn't noticed exactly when the lanky kid had vanished, nor did she much care. One of the kids had stopped on his way home and asked her if she was going to be all right.

She shrugged and called him stupid, told him she'd seen more in her lifetime that he could ever imagine. His lips had curled at that and he'd turned away. Feeling bad she had called out after him, shouting:

"My name's Ace, in case you were wondering."

He'd turned, the streetlamps forming a halo of light about his messy blonde hair and obscuring the details of acne on his face. He shrugged and smiled sadly.

"Doesn't matter." He'd responded. "In a week you'll be dead anyway."

She had scowled at that, spitting at the place where he'd been standing but he hadn't seen. The night had grown colder after that and she waited for a while, killing time kicking more cans and watching people traversing back and forth from the pubs till she'd finally given up on the idea of seeing the professor again that night and headed off in the direction of Chalk Farm Road and then down Crogsland Road. She could have gone back to the TARDIS but she didn't fancy sleeping alone in her familiar roundel decorated room without the gentle sensation of movement. Without movement the TARDIS just didn't feel like home so instead she traipsed through the squat, ugly doorway of Camden Lock Hotel, dropped her thirty-odd quid on the counter and headed up to one of the hotel's six single bedded rooms, holding her complimentary cup of tea between her palms so as to warm her hands.

The night had been restless and she had found that she couldn't sleep, fidgeting into the early hours of the morning before sitting bolt upright in bed and staring blankly at the unmarked videotape sitting on top of the hotel TV. For a while she had flicked back and forth through the four television channels, basking in the blue light that emanated from the curved screen before finally kicking the covers off the bed with her feet and snatching the videotape from the top of the TV. With a feeling not entirely unlike the scratching of a long-standing itch she forced the tape into the player and skimmed through channels of static in search of the video output.

She stopped abruptly on a screen of pure black, entranced as characters in a foreign language rose up from the darkness. Her spine tingled, a shiver running down it as the characters expanded, drowning the black with their lined white before shifting abruptly in colour as bursts of red began to manifest themselves. Ace blinked, feeling decidedly edgy at the idea of having stumbled across some sixth former's unfinished media art video. Even as the thought formulated she didn't believe it, she knew too much of the universe, as she had reminded the kids who had dropped the tape into her lap, to know that this was something darker, something sinister.

The image of a mountain emerged from the colour, clouds of white drifting up from its uppermost peak. The scenery was different from any place she'd ever been, instantly recognisable as being of Earth but alien in that it was completely outside of the places life had carried her. The image faded briefly to blackness and returned once more as it erupted in violent red, the top of the mountain now revealed as a very active volcano. She recoiled from the screen, appalled by the sudden violence and outpouring of the disaster. The top of the volcano exploded again, spilling further ash and rock into the blue skies. The image was abruptly replaced with a white screen filled with the dancing movement of a single letter that she had no understanding of, unable, as she was to identify the language.

The screen changed again revealing the roll of heavy dice in a metal bowl. The scene ended with the numbers _'one' _and _'five' _now clearly displayed and was replaced by a woman, stooped by age and kneeling on a mat of some kind. She was Asian, Ace noted, not Chinese like the familiar group of four or five kids that had gone to her school or the old man and woman in the local takeaway nor was she Indian like Shreela but definitely Asian, from somewhere like Japan or Korea, one of those places. She regretted the thought, feeling like a pig for not instantly knowing someone's cultural background.

The old woman was talking slowly and firmly in a language she couldn't understand. Her attention became distracted and she stopped listening to the alien words, focusing instead on the shape and movement of the woman's mouth. She felt a terrible feeling welling up inside her as she watched the old woman, her hands bending into strange shapes. The shape of a newborn infant filled the screen and somewhere in the darkness of her head she thought she could imagine its cries. Abruptly hundreds of angry faces flooded the screen, each one of them shouting words or insults that again she could not understand.

Her hands flew apart and she looked down at herself, anywhere but at the screen and the terrible faces displayed upon it. Her hands had been close to her, she realised, as if she were cradling a child. She shivered once more and the room seemed to become cold. The voices rose, drowning out the sound of the Camden traffic and for one terrible moment she thought they would wake the entire hotel. She felt terrible, as if she were dying inside, as if the whole world were against her. The voices died and she looked up, staring at a television set within the confines of the hotel's own set. The contrast couldn't have been greater. Whilst the hotel TV was smooth and modern, edged in black plastic and a shiny silver Japanese logo at the bottom, the TV on the video was old, wire antennae poking out from the top of its head like trembling arms waving to its unseen audience. The screen on the old TV shuddered, the blackness of its screen cut over and over again by static. A letter emerged from between the lines of static, as foreign as the last and yet distinctly different. It hung within the eye of the set for a moment before fading.

The scene changed again as a horrible face filled the whole of the television set, a male face convulsive and enraged, pushing forwards in a broken rhythm, the eyes wild and furious. Like the old woman Ace could tell that he wasn't English...not that it really mattered, the hate and rage that filled his face was universal, beyond culture. It still made any person look like the most barbaric of their animal ancestors. The focus shifted, the distant arches of tree branches behind the man filling the screen for a moment before his face returned. The camera moved away and Ace could know see a weeping gash in the man's shoulder, spilling blood down into the lens. The blackness flickered across the screen twice more before the face of the man reappeared and then everything turned violently red. The face pushed closer, murderous and hateful and flinched, pulling back from the television as his eyes met her own. The image wavered, spinning wildly and showing the full extent of the tree branches hanging over them. The screen began to darken and the distant wail of a newborn baby filled her head once more.

From the edge of the screen something began to roll over the circle of light dead at the centre of the television. Earth and rock spilled out of the light and slammed hard into the lens of the filming camera before complete darkness drifted back once more over the screen. Silence drifted and slowly the white language of the video's opening resumed.

There was an abrupt fracture in the scene, the darkness and terror suddenly replaced by a garble of colour and imagery, an advert of something or other again beyond her understanding. The scene lasted for thirty long seconds before the darkness returned momentarily and the tape flowered into static.

Her heart hammered in her chest, her trembling hands clutching at her throat and hair. She sat for a moment staring at the terrible ceaseless static before tearing the tape from the machine, her nails blunting against the dead plastic of the video recorder.

Unable to contain her terror she dressed, throwing the tape into her pocket and leaving her boots unlaced, laces trailing behind her as she thundered down the stairs. If she paused to think she may have begun to wonder why the TARDIS had failed to translate a non-English language for her and that in itself may have terrified her more than anything but she didn't, instead she raced downwards on the spiral of stairs and spilt out into the reception area.

Reception was deserted except for the small shape of a man in a dark jacket with his hands clutched gravely behind his back.

"Professor!" She cried out and threw herself towards him.

The little man turned slowly as if suddenly woken from a reverie.

"Ace," He murmured. "There's something terrible at foot here, something I can't quite put my finger on..." His voice trailed off as he tapped his fingers rhythmically against the opposing hand.

"Professor, listen to me!" She shouted, oblivious to the shuffle of feet on the upper floor and the fact that now she was certainly waking the guests. With shaking hands she drew out the videotape from her bomber jacket.

The small man's eyes narrowed as the tape came into view.

"Ace," He whispered through gritted teeth this time. "What have you done?"

"Professor, it's horrible, right? There was a mountain and a..."

He took hold of her wrist, his hand cold and his gaze sharp.

"Did you watch it?" He snapped, his voice containing a sudden anger.

"I...I..." She murmured, her mouth moving awkwardly like the old woman on the tape.

"Did you _watch _it?" He snarled again.

There were now definite noises above them.

Her eyes broke away from his.

"Yes..." She gasped.

"Oh, Ace..." He whispered softly.

She looked up; his blue eyes were soft once more, almost full to the brim with tears. The sound of angry movement and feet on stairs filled the hotel. The little man pulled on her wrist and suddenly she felt the cold air of night upon her face as they walked swiftly down the street.

"The videotape in itself is harmless," The little man announced as they turned corners and hurried along the lamp lit streets. "Without watching it the virus remains dormant, it is only when the information is viewed that it becomes active, a tiny portion of itself reproducing itself within the metabolism of the viewer, equal parts smallpox and something entirely human."

"Professor, the video's cursed isn't it?" Ace wailed.

They turned left, descending the steps down to Chalk Farm's closest platform.

"There are no such thing as curses, Ace, you should know that." The little man snapped angrily.

"But professor it was so real." She protested as a train rolled up in front of them and the doors opened.

Together they boarded the train, taking standing places either side of the door despite the absence of any others within the carriage. "I saw it, professor - there was a mountain and dice."

"And an elderly Japanese woman advising against a habit of playing in the water and a newborn child already dying before its eyes have fully opened."

Her eyes widened with shock.

"Then...then"

He waved her unfinished words away.

"Yes, I've seen it." He murmured gravely.

Desperately she took hold of him.

"When?" She shouted, suddenly asserting her dominance over the situation. "When did you watch it?"

"Ace, I'm a Time Lord..." He growled evasively but she had heard that speech before. She didn't need another lecture on the decidedly non-human way in which Time Lords experienced the passage of time.

"When did you watch the video, professor?" She shouted, her spit flecking his face.

He fixed her with a grave stare.

"One week ago." He said his eyes saddened once more.

"Professor!" Ace wailed.

As if on queue the lights of the carriage flickered, momentarily welcoming darkness into the depths of the London underground.

"I was hoping to avoid Earth in this time period, hoping to gather more information with which to formulate an antidote to combat the virus but there seems to be a great will exerting tremendous force upon the TARDIS. As it stands I fear I may have sadly squandered my final week."

The lights flickered once more.

"Close your eyes, Ace." He whispered.

"Professor..." She protested, her voice disintegrating into the familiar nasal whine that had so punctuated her speech as a child.

"DO IT!" The little man bellowed as the lights finally trembled their last and darkness consumed the carriage.

She did as instructed, her shaking hands clinging the grip that hung from the roof of the carriage and swaying in the motion - motion that once and in different circumstances had provided her with such comfort now distorted and broken. The atmosphere within the carriage turned cold as winter mornings and she heard the steps of his feet as he moved further into the belly of the train. There was the sound of something else, a crawling, shuffling motion of something rising up to mimic his movement, as if it was pulling itself against a great force towards him. She heard his feet stagger slightly back as the shuffling advanced.

"Listen to me," He cried out, his voice forceful and yet faintly desperate. "I know who you are and I know how you've been wronged but please, _this isn't the way_! I can help you if you let me, what you're doing now is wrong - it's _evil_!"

The shuffling advanced, slow dragging of naked feet upon the thick plastic of the carriage floor. She imagined dirt stained feet and horror threatening to overwhelm the professor and she wanted to pull her eyes open and will her rucksack to her. A swift blast of Nitro-9 would be enough to put a stop to anything.

"You're making a horrible mistake!" The professor shouted, the rhythm of his words quickening. "I've seen the horrible things that happened to you whilst you were alive and I want to help mend it. I can't change the past but I can help you find rest."

His voice choked off and the horrible phrase _'whilst you were alive'_ reverberated about Ace's head. She heard the professor stagger, falling to his knees, his voice suddenly distant.

"No, this can't be..." He whispered. "I look so tired, so very tired..."

She heard the horrible sound of his hat falling away and his delicate, scarred hands tearing at the greying hair at his temples. She cringed, her body crumpling inside as her hands loosed from the grip and she fell to the floor, cowering and wrapping her arms up over her head, terrified of the sound of the older man so pained. This wasn't right, they couldn't hurt him, he was the professor - curses and grudges didn't work on him!

He cried out one last time and she heard the sound of his body collapsing backwards onto the ground. Through the veil of darkness she felt the lights flicker once and she opened her eyes, instantly regretting it. Standing over the fallen form of the professor was a shabby, hunched over woman, her long hair hanging in thick greasy strands over her unseen face.

The professor remained unmoving at her feet, his head back and his face warped in the most terrible expression of fear and horror, the kind of terror that could only ever be known on a personal level. Ace screamed and the shuffling woman turned towards her, dragging her feet.

Darkness engulfed the train once more and still Ace screamed, she screamed so loud until bile erupted from her mouth and she doubled over, spilling her distant breakfast into her lap. The lights flickered on once more and her head rolled.

The woman was gone, only the professor and his swollen, terrified face remained. Shivering she pulled her legs up close to her chest, ignoring the stench and feel of the vomit in her lap. A dull light emerged from behind the professor's hair, opening up in the emptiness between his detailed internal organs and the pores of his skin. She knew what this was, she'd heard about it from a number of sources but the sight none the less was equally as horrific as the shambling form of the dreadful unnamed woman.

She turned away, willing the light to speed its change so she would no longer have to look upon the terrified expression of the dead professor. Outside the stationary lights pinned to the wall of the tube station cast her face in a ill light. She had a week, she knew that now, seven days and then the shambling woman with the dirt stained feet would return for her...and not even the professor could change that.

Tears welled in her eyes, leaving warm traces on her pale cheeks as a different kind of light emerged from the floor of the cabin and the sudden hammering stutter of a new double heartbeat filled the carriage. She didn't want to see, didn't want to know, too scared that there would be some reflection of the shambling woman in his new face.

_'...it is only when the information is viewed that it becomes active, a tiny portion of itself reproducing itself within the metabolism of the viewer, equal parts smallpox and something entirely human.'_

His words drifted through her head now. Whatever happened from this point onwards he would never be the same, the virus had rooted itself in his system, changed him. Even if he were stronger than the illness he would forever carry with him a hint of that horror, that terrible gift.

The lights filled her eyes but she made no attempt to blink. It didn't matter. In a week's time she would be blissfully unaware of how much the experience had influenced him. Like the three boys and two girls of the lanky kid's sixth form she would be dead and buried and, like the shambling woman, her bare feet would be stained by dirt.

One week was all it took. She closed her eyes against the light and the tears continued. One week. Despite the size of the universe, despite the horrors of other worlds and other cultures, the end had been born of human rage, of human hate.

The train continued to rattle on towards the coming week and inside its empty carriage, Ace prepared at last to embrace the dirt.


End file.
